| Human distinction within
creation
Of all living things, we are the most fragile—a “thinking reed” that can be killed by a “drop of water”; yet we are distinctive because we know we are mortal (Pascal). Seeking to be shielded from death, humans are easily mesmerised by religious myths and social sentiments that romanticise death and blithely conflate human life with the cycle of nature. Numerous conjectures from natural phenomena are made in quest of a definitive link between humans and nature but these diminish human distinction. Focus on nature is ambiguous as to human distinctiveness. Nature’s survival of the fittest—in which the death of every particular instance of life is necessary to give room and nutrition for the next—is contrary to human dignity affirmed in the gospel. With its definitive focus in Jesus Christ, the word of God’s creative generosity addresses humans in their distinctiveness, exceeding any possibility they can derive from nature. v Nature gives and takes away, generates and decays, finding equilibrium in life balanced by death. Humans transcend this cycle in their capacity for deliberation and decision; they can affirm or deny natural impulses in life that is only ever balanced by death. To assert the natural harmony of all things does not account for human freedom; we can contradict the harmony of natural vitality, for good or ill. Humans can refuse nature’s terms of harmony, such as its brutal culling of the weak. Yet without a source of perspective that endorses human distinctiveness and freedom, humans represent nature in conflict with itself. If humans are wholly of nature, inseparable from its impetus toward equilibrium, they are in conflict with nature by assuming the freedom to transcend and contest its natural harmony. Either humans are distinctive and can contest nature’s violent terms of harmony or humans are not distinctive and are therefore at war with nature in their presumptions of distinction from nature. If we are merely of nature with no reason for distinctiveness beyond the elemental, we are rightly levelled within nature’s impetus toward equilibrium—the inexorable and anonymous destiny within elemental recurrence—life, atrophy and death succeeded by life, atrophy and death in the oneness of all things. Without endorsement of human life otherwise than nature and levelled to the same end of all life by death, belief in human uniqueness is sustained by focusing on the achievements of society. These surpass any particular expression of human life terminated by death. Society is attributed with cultured distinctions, yet in anticipation of eventual oneness with nature. (Niebuhr) The romantic belief that all things are ultimately one, ends for the individual in anonymous silence in which the vitality of particular life is stilled forever, disappearing into presumed oneness—monism—in which all things are seamlessly, even if anonymously one. Everything about the destiny of the individual in religious or spiritual expressions of monism is contrary to the affirmation of unique worth in Christian faith. In Christian faith, life is lived once toward an end that transcends material existence. Biblical testimony to the righteousness of God is intrinsic to affirmations of unique human worth, establishing the value of human actions beyond natural vitality and the elemental. Life before the reality of God as personal is an endorsement of every person as unique. The singular event of each life gives the possibility of unique expressions of righteousness. These are denied any imperative beyond pragmatism and convention if there is only eventual dissolution of particular identity within the oneness of all in death. v What can be known about God of biblical testimony—as unique and distinguished from gods, idols and ideals conjured from phenomena—is clearly seen from creation (Rom. 1). Inability to read this is not for lack of extravagant beauty, grandeur and intricacy in creation but from want of seeing ourselves within a gift that exceeds the propensity both to confuse God with creation and to suppress human uniqueness by elevating the harmony of nature. Paul shows us where to look for what is to be seen beyond seeing—not by imaginative conjectures about nature that lead to folly but by gratitude and thanksgiving in which we recognise that our source of existence is not only more imaginative but infinitely more generous than we are. (Marion) Generosity implies a giver, giving, reception, relationship and communion—God disclosed in Jesus Christ, no less. Between visible and invisible, intentional grace is the crucial factor without which, there is opacity and mere guessing. Gift and reception denote the experience of being encountered as personal and vocative—the unique experience of being addressed by another. We are addressed by another to be invoked as personal and unique by such address—the vocative—which exceeds any nomination of material aspects of life. The capacity for volitional response or decision in relation to another is integral to our humanity as the basis of relationships and ethical responsibility. In our vocative and volitional capacities, we can surpass the elemental resources of nature, contesting its violent basis for equilibrium as feasible for human life, while enjoying the gift of creation with others to the glory of God. As unique, we are not captive to nature’s recurring struggle for life that is eventually trumped by death within a natural equilibrium. Self-giving and therefore life-giving possibilities among others exceed the scope of nature’s possibilities, even in the instinctive but highly selective nurture exhibited within any species of life. Vocation is an expression of responsibility toward others who are also addressed as personal. The vocative, volitional and vocational combine primary experiences that reflect biblical imperatives within life. To be called to fulfil these in commitment to Jesus Christ as the integral expression of our humanity is the essential character of being truly human in the midst of creation. Pagan assertions of religious sensibility sprung organically from the earth even as they fall from speculative minds as ideals, are antithetical to God’s initiative of self-disclosure in Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ does not conceal from us the reality of death but embraced our mortality to demonstrate life that exceeds biological life and the anxiety it provokes in knowing that we are mortal. In the midst of human fragility and mortality, we are invited to become through the gospel, one with God who is disclosed in a definitive human life, through which we can live in grace and truth beyond biological vitality with its harmony sustained by violence. The gospel counters pagan attachment to human life defined merely within natural phenomena. God is disclosed as to character in Christ crucified and risen, exceeding any conjecture derived from the elemental and any possibility natural vitality can contribute to ultimate reality as self-giving love. If creation groans within its own fearful symmetry of nurture and violence, its future possibility is now glimpsed in the transformation of its most distinctive expression of life—humans. As children of God through Christ and in the Spirit, people are given to intentional expression of glory to God the creator and life in grace as distinctive within creation for the sake of others.
References: Marion Being Given; In Excess; Niebuhr Man and Destiny I; Pascal Pensées. |
